In a wireless communications system there is typically a fixed amount of air link resources available for utilization by wireless communications devices for combined control signaling and traffic signaling. In a wireless communications system lacking centralized control, e.g., an ad hoc peer to peer network, the scheduling of traffic air link resources is a challenging task.
At times a single device in a peer to peer network may desire to transmit the same data to a plurality of other devices in the network. It would be beneficial if new methods and apparatus were developed which supported group communications, thus allowing the same traffic signal to be communicated efficiently to multiple other group members. It should be appreciated that transmitted traffic data intended for multiple recipients may not be successfully recovered by each of the intended recipients. Accordingly there is a need for methods and apparatus that permit efficient re-transmission of data in the case where an original transmission was not completely successful.